During the NFL meetings in Orlando, Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin spoke with media members and expressed excitement about working with new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith.

“I’m just excited about being uncomfortable,” Tomlin said. “I think there’s growth in that. I think whether it’s individuals or collective, it’s good to be on edge. It’s good to have that anxiety or that urgency that’s associated with not knowing. And so, that’s the benefit that you get sometimes when you bring in someone new.”

Anxiety, urgency, a sense of being on edge and a lack of comfort are certainly great ways to describe the mood of the Steelers fanbase in the wake of the past seven years without a playoff win.

Those are also great words to sum up how I feel about their ability to stock the quarterback position and how I feel about their attempts to do so this offseason.

Russell Wilson and Justin Fields are in. Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph and Mitch Trubisky are out. That should result in an upgrade in the level of play they got from Pickett last year. But I’m dubious that it will equate to the level of play they got from Rudolph over the last three weeks of the regular season.

Which still wasn’t good enough to get a playoff win for the first time since 2016.

Could Rudolph have replicated that effort for the length of a 17-game campaign? Apparently, Tomlin and the rest of the Steelers didn’t think so because retaining Rudolph would’ve been easy. The best offer he got elsewhere was just a one-year $2.87 million contract with the Tennessee Titans.

But based on what the Steelers have tried to do to prepare for Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement and recover from it, we have every reason to be “uncomfortable” with the franchise’s ability to get the right quarterback under center.

Pickett’s career in Pittsburgh lasted only two years; Trubisky was a bust, and whatever they thought of Rudolph when he got drafted, it didn’t manifest until the end of his time here, and they were not convinced about his ability to be that player long-term.

So, yeah, I’m “anxious” about how Wilson and Fields are going to work out.

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For the time being with Fields, optimistic Steelers fans are doing that intellectual inconsistency thing that they do so well. After six years of pointing at Lamar Jackson in Baltimore, calling him overrated and telling Ravens fans they’ll never win a Super Bowl with a quarterback who runs as much as he does, now Steelers fans are getting hyped up over Fields, who, on his best day to this point has been Lamar-lite.

As far as Wilson goes, it’s one thing to laud the lack of a significant cap hit he’ll carry as the franchise’s likely starting quarterback. But how much of his play has truly been laudable since he left Seattle two seasons ago?

Tomlin was directly asked about Wilson, the QB on the field, as opposed to his off-field attributes and resume, and this is the best he could come up with.

“The most attractive component of his profile to me is his quest for greatness. His chase for legacy,” Tomlin said. “This is not a guy who is hungry, meaning that can be satisfied. This is a guy that’s driven. And you want to work with people of that mindset. This guy’s got a vision of what he wants his career to look like. And he’s got a lot of work to do. Obviously, he’s had some professional challenges, particularly in recent years, and he appears to be a guy that wants to meet those challenges head-on and continue to move forward with his career. And that was attractive.”

OK, that’s all great. But, again, via the official transcript from the meetings, the question was, “What is it about Russ that you like on the field? What have you seen him do, what can you do with your offense?”

Tomlin didn’t reply with anything about increased arm strength from what they had with Pickett, better pocket presence, an ability to use all quadrants of the field, accuracy, red-zone and third-down conversion rates, or mobility.

Hopefully, all of those things will be an upgrade over what Pickett displayed when healthy last year. But if, for now, all Tomlin is willing to advance is Wilson’s “chase for legacy,” then I consider myself to be in a continued state of “anxiety.”

At some point, specifically when the ball is kicked off to start the regular season in early September, we have to start analyzing Wilson and Fields based on how good or bad they are on the field and not how cost-effective they were to acquire.

And when it comes to this franchise’s ability to acquire and cultivate quarterbacks aside from Terry Bradshaw in 1970 and Ben Roethlisberger in 2004, I hope you’ll understand why I may have a little anxiety in that regard.

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